SEO and content marketing don’t require that much money, but they do require time and effort. Thus, it can be said that there is a key ingredient missing. We’re talking about Pay Per Click or PPC marketing. SEO may be the cost-effective way to boost your revenue, but there is a reason why 70% of all money spent on digital advertising was spent on PPC campaigns. Why you ask? Well, the reason for this lies in the fact that 64.6% of all searchers click on Google ads when they’re shopping online.
Organic SEO campaigns do help with increasing your ranking, but a paid boost in the form of a PPC campaign can be the missing link. Taking up a PPC campaign may be a challenge with all the metrics and the parameters, but thankfully there are plenty of successful campaigns that you can look up to.
If you’ve made the choice to take the step towards PPC, it’s time to focus and forge those amazing ideas into something tangible. Here’s how to launch a successful and unique PPC campaign for the first time.
The Beginning
Every campaign is a result of the hard work you carry out, but the real effort lies behind the scenes: conversions earned through incessantly conducted research. Before kick-starting your campaign, you need to do a little bit of snooping around just so you know what the customers want and how they are they searching for it.
Google AdWords campaigns usually start off with people knowing the exact keywords to be used during the process. Of course, you could initiate a campaign with random keywords and cross your fingers, hoping for the best. However, most often, this practice is disastrous. If customers don’t search for your product using the words and phrases predicted, the campaign will fall apart, and even worse! Your money could go to waste targeting the wrong keywords.
Of course, nothing is perfect and marketing is, at the end of the day, a game of trial and error. Experimenting will get you far but remember – calculated, research-induced experimentation is the key.
Keyword Tools are Your Friend
Once you have the initial idea, don’t be afraid to look for some unconventional help. Keywords that you’re going to put to use have to be supported by data. You can get that data by using the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, a unique way of validating the keywords that you intend to use.
Search volume, trends, CPC (cost per click), the frequency of use – all of these parameters can greatly aid you in your mission to launch a successful campaign and the Keyword Planner has them all.
Suggestions are also one other good thing about keyword-assistance software. They propose the best alternative to your ideas, giving you a variety of choices to experiment with. Like we’ve said, experimentation is the mother of all progress. Having sufficient assistance in that department could prove really helpful.
Take note: although some keywords have poor search volume according to the Keyword Planner, that doesn’t mean you should drop them just yet. In fact, they could be a great keyword alternative when phrased differently. This is called recycling of keywords and it’s a lesser known, but effective strategy.
Organizing the Keywords is a Must-Do Thing
Okay, so you’ve done your research and the AdWords Keyword Planner did its job as well. Now what? The key is to gather all the available keywords and organize them accordingly. The best way to do so is to separate the words and phrases into:
- Desired terms
- Competitors terms
- Generic terms
- Related terms
Such a separation will afford you with greater precision and better value for your money. You can separate the priority ones from the less important ones. Such a move may not be deemed as a significant one by many, but it can be the difference between spending your dollars efficiently and wasting them. When it’s your first campaign, you can’t afford to lose money on irrelevant keywords.
Negative Keywords are of Importance As Well
Search intent is extremely significant when putting your campaign together and cost per click is an important number to pay attention to. Thus, you have to be careful when it comes to setting up the exact system of your keywords’ appearance.
Setting up negative keywords means that you determine the exact terms and phrases that you don’t want to trigger your ads. If you’re a car spare part shop owner, you don’t want your ads to appear when someone searches for Lamborghinis simply because you don’t sell them. AdWords charges per click and you want to keep your clicks for those customers that you want to click your ads, not random visitors.
Know Your Budget, As Well As Your Competitors’
Before you insert a keyword in your campaign, make sure that you have the budget for it. Not using the Google AdWords Keyword Planner will be the demise of your campaign, because you may end up blowing all your money on fewer clicks. This is something you absolutely don’t want to do if you’re thinking of running a successful first campaign.
Also, don’t be afraid to model. Every great marketer learned his craft through modelling first and experience later. Since you’re not experienced yet, the best option would be gathering knowledge from everywhere around you. It may seem like a slow process, but it will end up being what makes your first PPC campaign a raging success.
